City as Cultural Economy 'Singapore and the Themed Landscape of ...

City as Cultural Economy
‘Singapore and the Themed
Landscape of Heritage Preservation’
Kornshulee Nikitsch
Economic Geography (SS08)
LMU, 10.6.2008

Singapore and the Themed
Landscape of Heritage Preservation
Definition of “Cultural Economy”
Singapore and the Themed Landscape of
Heritage Preservation
From Reconstructing the Past to Making
of a New Nation
Heritage Mobilization for Urban
Development
New Asia-Singapore
Conclusion

Definition of “Cultural Economy”
“Cultural Economy” as goods and
services that are extremely
heterogeneous in their substance,
appearance, and sectoral origins,
flowing from traditional
manufacturing sectors engaged in the
transformation of physical inputs into
final outputs
Allen J. Scott

Cultural Economy Products…
are made competitively marketable as modes of social display,
forms of entertainment and distraction, or sources of information
and self-awareness, i.e.
Goods and services that involve some
personalized transaction or the
production and transmission of
information, for example, tourist
services, live theater, or advertising
A hybrid form, such as music recording,
book publishing, or film production

City as Cultural Economy
Peter Hall (Cities in Civilization, 1998):
“Cities have always played a privileged
role as centers of cultural and economic
activity. From their earliest origins, cities
have exhibited a conspicuous capacity
both to generate culture in the form of
arts, ideas, styles and ways of life, and to
induce high levels of economic innovation
and growth…”

Singapore and the Themed Landscape
of Heritage Preservation
From Reconstructing the Past to Making of
a New Nation
Building a “Nation” in a Modern Cityscape

Building a “Nation” in a Modern Cityscape
Public housing landscape through the
Housing and Development Board (HDB) as
the state’s most important tools for
developing a modern city
Housing-market regulatory mechanism to
maintain particular goals, such as ensuring
priority to particular types of family
structures, particular mixes of races in
estates, and particular orientation toward
work

Recreating the Past and Reconstructing the “Nation”:
Heritage Mobilization for Urban Development
5 Ms: State’s hegemonic ideologies of
multiracialism, multilingualism, multiculturalism,
multireligiosity and meritocracy, in reconstructing
the sense of the “Nation”
Multiracializing the landscape: the heritance of
street names and the rebuilding of ethnic quarters
Streets naming to reflect the multilingual,
multiracial and multicultural context of the society
and be easily translated or pronounced in the other
official languages, namely English, Mandarin,
Malay and Tamil

Singapore as the “Tourism Capital”
with Multiculturalism
Singapore’s Five Categories of Heritage:
The heritage of nationbuilding
derived from
and including the
experience of living
under the British
colonial
administration, the
Japanese Occupation,
the post-war struggle
for independence, and
the struggle against
Communism
The heritage of economic
success, focusing on the
values of Singapore’s
migrant predecessors
and their economic
achievements

Singapore as the “Tourism Capital”
with Multiculturalism
Singapore’s Five Categories of Heritage:
The multicultural heritage expressed in the lifestyles,
customs and traditions of the different ethnic
communities
The heritage of the man-made environment comprising
buildings, landmarks and other visible and tangible
links to the country’s past in the physical landscape
The heritage of the natural
environment, defining
Singapore’s territorial
identity and its location within
the Southeast Asian ecological
region

Singapore as the “Tourism Capital”
with Multiculturalism
Heritage preservation as an element of multi-faceted
redevelopment strategies designed to cater tourist
demands for uniqueness and to improve urban
aesthetics
Thematic development through the Singapore
Tourism Board (STB) transforming opportunity
areas around suitable existing attractions into
thematic zones
Reformulation of the city’s cultural products to make
Singapore a destination for memorable experiences
by integrating activity clusters, services, facilities and
street furniture in historic areas into a single themed
development

Examples of Dynamics and Politics in the
Shaping of Heritage Landscapes in Singapore
Chinatown: The Politics
of Reinvention
Kampong Glam: The
Politics of Exclusion
The Merlion: Monument
and Myth

Chinatown: The Politics of Reinvention
Singapore as new Asia, a city of
many colors and contrasts,
cultures and cuisines
Traditional shophouses
refurbished for
business purposes

Kampong Glam: The Politics of
Exclusion
The demarcation between
conservation and demolition of the
Malay heritage
The reinterpretation and reinvention
of state-envisioned of Malay heritage
as pieces of life and landscape that can
be objectified, isolated and displayed
according to aesthetic and political
standards

The Merlion: Monument and Myth
Merlion as a self-consciously styled
attraction created for the express
purpose of forging a tourism image
and a part of rarefied objects
tourists insist on seeing,
photographing, and purchasing as
proof of their having experienced
Singapore
The Merlion, a “half
beast, half fish” as an
iconographic feature of
Singapore’s landscape
reflecting the quest for
national symbol

New Asia-Singapore
The Esplanade-Theater on the Singapore Bay to
promote Singapore as a global city for the arts with
multicultural Asian roots
City branding against other cities in the region

Conclusion
Symbiosis of place,
culture and economy in
modern capitalism
reemerging in powerful
new forms as cultural
economies in certain
countries
The “Uniquely
Singapore” as social
and spatial construct of
a nation on the themed
landscape of heritage
preservation

Thank You
For Your Attention

References
Hall, Peter G. 1998. Cities in Civilization. New York, Pantheon.
Kong, Lily, and Brenda S. A. Yeoh. 2003. The Politics of
Landscape in Singapore: Constructions of ‘Nation’. New York:
Syracuse University Press.
Low, Linda and Toh Mun Heng. 1997. “Singapore:
Development of Gateway Tourism.” In Tourism Development
in Asia and Australasia, edited by Frank M. Go and Carson L.
Jenkins, 237-254. London: A Casell Imprint.
Perry, Martin, Lily Kong and Brenda Yeoh. 1997. Singapore:
A Developmental City State. Chichester: John Wiley.
Scott, Allen J. 2006. Geography and Economy. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Scott, Allen J. 2000. The Cultural Economy of Cities. London:
Sage Publications.
Zukin, Sharon. 1991. Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to
Disney World. Berkley: University of California.